La Paz.
March 2011.
We arrive in La Paz at night, and the view from the plateau overlooking the city is superb.
We head towards Hotel Oberland for a good cheese fondue.
This hotel, run by a Swiss family, is known by all the overlanders passing by La Paz.
Behind the hotel, there is a little yard for camping.
First we meet a Swiss family travelling in a Toyota, then a couple of very friendly
German pensioners who spoil the children.
Our Trixou loses her first tooth.
The little mouse even came inside the tent at night.
At morning, she waved her coin and said "This is the beginning of my fortune" !
From the hotel, we go to La Paz in a minibus.
We understand very quickly, that the more we try to make room for the other passengers,
the more the driver takes passengers...
We visit the magnificent Cathedral of San Francisco, and its overloaded baroque style.
The streets are very lively.
The girls can not resist the colorful fabrics,
and the two girls have fun tiing them behind their backs, which amused many Bolivians.
We stop in a small shop where a craftsman makes musical instruments.
We buy a Quena Quena, a traditional flute made of bamboo,
and Matthieu promises an ice cream to the first one who could play "In the moonlight."
La Paz is known for its witches market where dried llama fetuses hang in the storefronts.
They are buried under the foundations of houses, as offering to the Pachamama, "mother earth".
There are also fortune tellers, who read the future in coca leaves!
Although La Paz is the capital of Bolivia, is a very traditional city.
We stroll with pleasure in the city center.
This soldier, standing guard at the tomb of one of the benefactors of the country
seems to come out of "Tintin and the Broken Ear".
A loud noise startles us.
In a sloped street, this minibus, whose brakes failed, stopped into a wall.
We visit a few museums.
We go back to the hotel a little bit tired, but that old American school bus with dead suspensions just kills us !
Here as well, the left wing populist parties are champion in the art of demagoguery.
We would laugh seing Sarkozy dressed as the Gauls, announcing that the government obeys to the people !
Knowing what the people is like, we will not complain ...
After three days in La Paz, we quit this city that we adored ..
